Gatsas for Mayor: Working hard for Manchester

Too many politicians pretend that the choices facing elected officials are simple matters of obvious moral clarity. Mayor Ted Gatsas' opponent in the 2013 election happens to be one of those charlatans. Mayor Gatsas, on the other hand, has recognized that running a city effectively requires hands-on, blue-collar type of work.

A good mayor does not offer simplistic solutions to non-existent problems while ignoring large, difficult ones.

Rather, a good mayor identifies the city's most pressing problems, offers solutions, then builds coalitions to solve them. That has been Mayor Gatsas' method.

Under the spending cap imposed by voters, Gatsas worked with department heads to find better, cheaper ways of doing the city's business. He was able to get most of the city's unions to agree to concessions that saved the taxpayers huge sums of money.

He has worked hard to produce the best possible school budget under the cap. He collaborated with school board members to find extra money after having released his own spending proposal. He tried to free up millions more to avoid teacher layoffs, but was thwarted by the teachers union.

As mayor, Ted Gatsas has been a work horse. City government is better run under his management, and it will continue to be ably run if he is reelected this fall.